Sunday, June 27, 2010

Jonah Hex

If you’re familiar with this blog or me at all you know that I tend to cling on to the positive aspects of films and come out of the theater liking most efforts. The majority of people would say I rate films too high in almost every case and I’m ok with being overly optimistic in these instances. However, once in awhile I run into something in which I just can’t find the bright side. Enter DC Comics adaption, Jonah Hex.

The concept is not the main issue with the film. Josh Brolin stars as the title character who uses his bounty hunter skills to track down a terrorist, played by John Malkovich, who is trying to blow up the post Civil War United States. Hex also has some super-natural powers and that terrorist happened to burn His family alive. Now where to start? Malkovich played his usually creepy self in a role that lacked any kind of dimension. He was a Confederate who wanted to destroy the Union… literally destroy the Union, as in blow it up with a giant cannon. The issue with developing an evil mastermind is that the film has to convince the audience someone would want to go about their evil plan. In this case, so many innocent civilians were murdered with no plan to impact the overall scheme I just couldn’t buy it.

Josh Brolin’s performance was fine. That’s really all that can be said because almost everything out of his mouth was a campy one-liner. I know better than to blame that on the actor instead of the screenwriter. Though no amount of script doctors could have saved Megan Fox’s performance. The prostitute, Lilah, that she played was not important to the story and did nothing except bring a woman into the fold. Yeah fine, Megan Fox is hot blah, blah, blah but she is a very weak actress. Her poor southern drawl came and went multiple times and the complete absence of chemistry with Brolin created a number of very awkward scenes. To draw a comparison, it was like if Alfred and Two Face started making out during The Dark Knight… exactly. Michael Fassbender’s over the top performance as Burke, the Irish henchman was a rare bright spot, and deserves to be mentioned.

The last of my major complaints comes with the glancing over of certain aspects of the film that could have strengthened it. One of the early scenes is animated with comic book style graphics. But that one scene was the only time. The theme doesn’t even return for the credits. It was as if the director forgot to film that sequence and decided it would be cheaper to draw it. That obviously didn’t happen but that’s what it looked like. The other theme was Hex’s ability to rouse the dead. It was one of the few unique elements in the film, but it’s hardly used. I guess Jonah Hex is just another reminder that all comic books shouldn’t be made into movies. I don’t want to dissuade potential viewers from seeing it however. It’s the best Post-Civil War-Sci Fi-Apocolyptic thriller since 1999’s Wild Wild West. (4.3 out of 10)

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